I remember the Summer of 1973, when John Dean was testifying before the Watergate committee.

At the time, I would rather have watch cartoons, or Ultraman, but we had one TV, and my mom was determined to follow the hearings, so I watched a lot of testimony, Dean, Halderman, Erlichman, Porter, etc.

Needless to say, John Dean’s testimony about Trump’s obstruction of justice was a trip down memory lane:

The star witness of Watergate took a turn as the star witness for House Democrats’ inquiries into President Trump on Monday. And in doing so, he laid out a compelling series of parallels between the two situations.

Former White House counsel John Dean acknowledged at the start of Monday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing that he wasn’t there as a “fact witness.” Instead, he noted in his opening statement several ways in which he sees the report of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III echoing Watergate.

Dean didn’t run through each of those verbally during his testimony, but his written statement lays his case out in detail.

The most obvious parallel Dean noted involved himself: It concerns the role of the White House counsel. Just as he was the most significant witness against Richard M. Nixon, former White House counsel Donald McGahn has emerged as the most significant witness in the Mueller investigation. McGahn didn’t technically flip on Trump, as Dean did when he pleaded guilty in Watergate, but as Dean pointed out, “McGahn is the only witness that the special counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn ‘a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House.’ “

I’m not sure that the outcome will be at all similar, Nancy Pelosi is no Carl Albert, after all.